I’ve got a problem that consistently annoys me. My system clock always runs six minutes fast. Precisely 6 minutes fast. It doesn’t gain or lose time, it just always jumps ahead six minutes at some point after I set it correctly.
I’ve tried d/ling a app that periodically syncs my clock with “official” time but it just sets it back every 7 days or whatever to be undone by whatever keeps making my clock be 6 minutes fast.
Anyone know how I can fix this nuisance?
You we first rule out the fact that you don’t live your life 6 minutes behind?
I considered that but I’m always running far more than 6 minutes behind so that can’t be it!
Our old computer (named Blinky by elfbabe) loses exactly an hour every day or so. It appears to lose the hour on an unpredictable pattern, or one complex enough that I haven’t been able to discover its algorithm.
Sometimes it’s so out of whack that it tells the correct time. This never lasts, however.
While we’re at it, I have “self-synchronizing” iHome radio/iPod player that gains time and cannot be dissuaded because there are no buttons to change the time. Unplugged, it runs meriily along on a battery. Any ideas (other than smashing it)?
Just to let you know that you aren’t crazy, every single computer at my office (which is 12 computers) does exactly this, and in fact they’re all about 6 minutes fast also. So, I’ll be interested in the responses too!
It’s always been irritating, but not quite enough for me to invest any serious amount of time researching the issue. I had always figured it was somehow the fault of the network server, which suffers the same problem no matter how many times I reset the clock… but then it even continued after the old crusty server running Windows NT was replaced with a sleek shiny new one running Server 2003.
My current theory is that the problem is caused by ghost pirates, so anyone with any better ideas is welcome!
Maybe the atomic clock synchronization that you do is reaching a server that is in a time-zone 6 minutes off from yours. That would probably be in Bangladesh or Antarctica. Either that or the electricity is really slow from the time server to you and it takes 6 minutes to get to you. Not bad really because some of them are hundreds of miles away. I wish I could go that fast.
Starting with XP (I think) Windows will automatically sync to a time server. You can go under the control panel and click on date and time (might have to switch to classic view, I don’t remember where it is under the catagory view) then click on the tab for “internet time”. This will tell you what time server you are syncing to. You can disable it or choose a different time server.
If your computer is part of a domain it will automatically sync to the domain controller. If every computer in your office is off by six minutes it’s probably the domain controller’s fault. Whoever is in charge of the domain controller needs to fix how it gets its time.
engineer_comp_geek has given the solution. Your domain controler is likely the one that is off by six minutes, and your computer is syncing with it. It likely occurs when you start the computer each morning and it connects to the network. Your once a week sync via the internet once a week changes the time once a week and the next time your computer syncs with the local network domain controler it resets it back to 6 minutes off.
Nope, definitely not an issue with a domain controller. I’ve got a lonely home PC plugged into a cable modem via a wireless router. I know about the internet time control. Mine was set to update weekly at time.nist.gov. I manually fixed the time yesterday and it’s still keeping proper time. I forced a internet time update and it maintained the proper time. All this was set up before when the time would always be messed up. I changed the site to time.windows.com to see if that works any better. Hopefully things will stay accurate for the time being, I’ll give it a week.
This is precisely what happens in my place of work. We have a single server that sets the time for approximately 1200 other servers, which in turn serve approximately 15,000 desktop clients (plus other devices - and yes, I know that’s a fairly high server-to-client ratio; I didn’t design the damned thing). At any rate, our domain controllers, which take their time from Mr. Magical Time Server are all off by about 5 minutes. Users generally wouldn’t notice this, if it weren’t for the fact that their telephones (which are also networked) didn’t take their display time from a completely independent server. We get lots of calls about the time on the workstation not being the same as on the phone; they’re incredulous when I tell them the best answer is to ask the office’s phone tech to change the time on his server (even though it’s accurate), since we’ve never been able to even FIND the dude (or chick) responsible for maintaining the time on the server for the worldwide time server…
I worked with statistical real time collected data. That type of problem was a real problem when it happened. I knew what it was, so I asked the IT guy to fix it and he luckly could and did. We had a better IT guy than the company deserved, because he married into the bussiness. Unlike most IT people he was out and about during the days working other areas, if the system was doing fine.
Though your 6min jump sounds pretty suspicious, you may be able to deal with it via brute force.
I found that my Media Center PC was starting TV program recordings a minute or so off, and noticed that my system clock was pretty darned inaccurate. Even a daily update wasn’t enough.
After poking around on Microsoft’s website I found out the command-line stuff needed to tell the time sync service to update the clock every fifteen minutes.
It works like a charm!
Well, there it happened. I get home from work today and my manually updated time was again 6 minutes off. I forced a new update from both servers and nothing changed. Then about 2 minutes later it fixed itself to the proper time.
What the hell is so fucked up with Windows that it can’t fucking manage it’s time? I’m gonna turn off the auto updates and see what the clock does. I bet to stays closer to accurate for longer than the buggy update thing.